Street Festivals, yes please.

Last Saturday Mal and I decide to go and do one of our tourist things and take a tour of this stream downtown. The subway drops us off at City Hall station. We step out into an "informational fair." We walk around, booth by booth, looking at the displays. This is a street fair, geared towards foreigners, to show us all of the different organizations that are here for our benefit while in Seoul! We get pamphlets, business cards, maps, even free gifts!! There were booths representing medical centers, Seoul history museum, dental & derm offices, English theater arts, etc etc. It is very nice to know that there is this entire network of people that are here, to help us if we need anything at all!

After collecting our fair share of freebees, we turn the corner and 'Voila'--an international food festival!! Uh-maz-ing! This reminds me of Taste of Chicago except that it is not uber hot, it's also really clean, (remember that somehow there is no garbage in Korea) and the food is not just from Chicago, rather it's from all over the world. We eat pad thai from Thailand, chicken satay from Indonesia, spinach cake from Greece, wine from Argentina (a Malbec of course,) and beer from Vietnam. Delish!!
We meander our way towards our original purpose--the stream, aka Cheonggyecheon. The stream is gorgeous, set between beautiful marble walls, with fancy decor along the way. Walking along the stream with our beers...(in Korea you can drink your beer anywhere you want!!) these two very nice Korean girls come up to us and ask us to take their picture. We do so, and then we start chatting. One of the girls speaks really good English--she lived in Canada for a year. They ask us if we'd like them to show us around the area and of course we say we are happy to walk around with them as we have no plan. We walk through Insadong where I buy two sun dresses from a street vendor, and we see a lot of the traditional food and art that is Korean. We finally sit down at a traditional Korean restaurant and eat Korean pizza and drink Makkoli--a rice wine alcohol that you drink out of a bowl, is ladled into your cup, and is semi creamy, yet has bubbles?? Sounds strange I know, but is quite good--and gives you that nice relaxed feeling one would expect from rice wine alcohol. :)

After dinner the girls take us to a "sticker" photo booth. These are very popular in Korea. You go with your friends to a venu that is filled with photo booths and people. There are many props to wear/dress up in. You take your photos, and when finished, you can edit your photos electronically by putting all of these silly decorations on it. And print--you've got yourself some funky photos. (See below.)

Then they take us to a Karaoke bar. First true Karaoke experience in Korea = SO MUCH FUN. You rent a room for about $15/hour. The room is awesome, clean with fancy couches, an entire sound system, a flat screen TV, and some mics. What more does one need? We sang, "Dancing Queen," "Bohemian Rhapsody," and "Toxic" to name a few. Once again, GREAT day/evening in Seoul!!